Kenneth Ira Appel

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Alternative Title:
Kenneth Ira Appel

Kenneth Ira Appel, American mathematician (born Oct. 8, 1932, Brooklyn, N.Y.—died April 19, 2013, Dover, N.H.), provided (1976), in collaboration with his colleague Wolfgang Haken, a mathematical proof that solved the long-standing four-colour map problem. Appel and Haken spent some four years working on the theoretical reasoning behind the topological conjecture, originally posed in the 1850s, that four is the minimum number of colours required on any plane map such that no two adjacent regions (i.e., with a common boundary section) would be of the same colour. Appel and Haken faced harsh criticism by some in the field, however, because of their breakthrough use of some 1,200 hours of mainframe-computer time to handle the calculations. That innovation led to considerable debate among other mathematicians about whether the four-colour theorem—or any future theorems that relied on computer calculations and could not be verified by hand—should be considered proved. Appel studied mathematics at Queens College, New York City (B.S., 1953), and the University of Michigan (Ph.D., 1959). After working (1959–61) in cryptography for the federal government’s Institute for Defense Analyses, Princeton, N.J., he joined (1961) the faculty at the University of Illinois, where he met Haken, a fellow mathematics professor. Appel was advanced to associate professor (1967) and professor (1977), but in 1993 he left Illinois to become chairman of the mathematics department at the University of New Hampshire. He retired in 2003. Appel and Haken in 1979 were joint recipients of a Fulkerson Prize for discrete mathematics.